CRail wrote: ... What's absurd is statements like "If I see smoke I'm smashing a window." If you do that you should be banned from the system as you're a detriment to public safety. ...

I, too, support the "If I see smoke, I'm smashing a window". I'm sorry you feel that way, but in an emergency, all rules are off. I had an uncle killed in a dormitory fire. Fire safety is ingrained into my family. We don't wait for someone else to declare an emergency. If a fire is not extinguished within ten seconds, I'm declaring an emergency. If people in the Station Night Club (or Coconut Grove, or MGM Grand) had started evacuation immediately, there would have been fewer deaths.

CRail wrote: ... What's absurd is statements like "If I see smoke I'm smashing a window." If you do that you should be banned from the system as you're a detriment to public safety. ...

I, too, support the "If I see smoke, I'm smashing a window". I'm sorry you feel that way, but in an emergency, all rules are off. I had an uncle killed in a dormitory fire. Fire safety is ingrained into my family. We don't wait for someone else to declare an emergency. If a fire is not extinguished within ten seconds, I'm declaring an emergency. If people in the Station Night Club (or Coconut Grove, or MGM Grand) had started evacuation immediately, there would have been fewer deaths.

There were also multiple trained first responders on the train who expressed the same view. When you see smoke on a train, you don't know where it's coming from and there really isn't time to find out. I was on the platform at State Street for the smoke incident earlier this year, and with that experience in hand it's impossible for me to think these people were even slightly in the wrong for what they did. It's easy to monday-morning-quarterback this stuff from the safety of your chair when you know all the facts and have time to think it over. It's not so easy to make the perfect decision in the moment.